U.S. airline fined $50,000 for kicking Muslim passengers off planes

Discrimination against Muslims on airplanes has unfortunately become a common occurrence among airlines worldwide. However, passengers subjected to this anti-Muslim bigotry are refusing to stay silent and are instead taking airlines to court and winning. 

A U.S. court recently fined Delta Air Lines $50,000 for ordering three Muslim passengers off planes in two separate incidents, AP News reported. The decisions to remove the flyers were made despite the fact that security officials had cleared them off to travel. 

According to a consent order released by the U.S. Transportation Department on Friday, the airline denied charges of discrimination against these passengers but "agreed it could have handled the situations differently."

The airline argued that in both cases, "it acted based on the passengers' behavior, not their identity, and its employees acted reasonably."

The department stated that Delta violated anti-bias laws by removing the passengers. Its officials also ordered the airline "to provide cultural-sensitivity training to pilots, flight attendants and customer-service agents involved in the incidents."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) - which represented one of the Muslim passengers - questioned how just the penalty sum was. 

Karen Dabdoub, the executive director of CAIR's Cincinnati branch, explained that Delta earned nearly $4.8 billion last year so a $50,000-fine is just "a slap on the wrist" for them. 

Nevertheless, Dabdoub acknowledged that the fine is a sign that the U.S. Transportation Department is taking discrimination claims seriously. 

The government gave no explanation as to how the size of the fine was agreed on but passing it "establishes a strong deterrent against future similar unlawful practices by Delta and other carriers," the exec added. 

One of the cases listed under the recent court decision dates back to July 2016. At the time, a passenger on a flight from Paris to the U.S. told a flight attendant that a couple made her nervous because the woman wore a veil and her husband appeared to have "inserted something in his phone."

The air hostess walked by the couple to follow on these claims and reported them after she saw the man writing "Allah" (the Arabic word for God) several times while texting via his phone. After he was made aware of the matter, the flight's captain requested that the couple be interviewed by a Delta supervisor and security officer outside the plane. 

The couple - U.S. citizens returning home - were later cleared to fly because "they raised no red flags." But despite that, the captain refused to allow them to get back on the plane and obliged them to take another flight the next day. The duo, who was clearly discriminated against, was not named in the published consent order. However, their representatives identified them as Faisal and Nazia Ali. 

The other case tried in court took place in Amsterdam just five days after the first incident. It saw flight attendants and passengers complain about a Muslim flyer who had also been cleared through all security checks including Delta's security office. The flight's co-pilot said he saw nothing "unusual about the man." However, the fact that he's Muslim unsettled people to the extent the flight captain had to actually bring the New York-bound flight back to Amsterdam to take the man off of it. 

The passenger had his bag removed and the area around his seat was searched but nothing was found. He later took another flight and wasn't subjected to any additional screening while boarding it. According to the Transportation Department, this in itself is evidence that his removal from the first flight was discriminatory.

Islamophobia is unfortunately everywhere and crowded travel points are no exception. ">Flying While Muslim" is a term coined following the countless Islamophobic incidents that have occurred on planes and at airports in recent years. 

The phrase is a reflection of how people of Islamic faith are being singled out for interrogation and uncalled for searches at airports around the world; some are also often forced off planes for no reason at all when that's just >utterly unacceptable. 

In 2016, an Iraqi student was removed from a Southwest Airline flight for saying "Inshallah" while on the phone with his uncle before departure. That same year, two Muslim women were thrown off an American Airlines aircraft because a flight attendant felt "unsafe" in their presence. 

Last year, an American Airlines flight was >canceled after a Muslim man "flushed the toilet twice" before takeoff.